His arrest on April 20 shed a light on one of the darkest corners of the internet, where paedophiles in the US, Europe and elsewhere pay facilitators in the Philippines to sexually abuse children – including babies – directing their moves through webcam.

Webcam sex tourism is a relatively new crime, but it’s spreading disturbingly quickly. The United Nations has referred to the ‘alarming growth of new forms of child sexual exploitation online’, and the FBI says it’s epidemic – and that at any given moment there are 750,000 child predators online.

Almost every case stems from the Philippines, where good English speakers, increased internet connections and widespread international cash transfer systems combine with widespread poverty and easy access to vulnerable children, creating a perfect storm. There have been as many as three busts a week in the country this spring alone.

Most victims are under the age of 12. According to the Associated Press the youngest, who was rescued a few weeks ago, was a two-month-old infant.

‘This should serve as a warning,’ NBI anti-human trafficking chief Janet Francisco said. ‘We will really put them in jail and they will die in jail.’

Officers found a young girl’s denim shorts on the floor of Deakin’s house (Picture: AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

Shoes are piled in the corner of Deakin’s home (Picture: AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

An NBI investigator holds up a meth pipe during the raid (Picture: AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

Deakin told officers he grew up in a splintered family in the small city of Peoria in Illinois. He was licensed as a roofing contractor in his 30s, seasonal work which left him with a lot of free winters.

He used this time to study computers, before moving to the Philippines in 2000 to work setting up internet service providers and installing Blackmagic livestreaming production programmes.

His home, however, was filled with junk. His fridge was almost empty, he had stacks of used egg cartons that were falling off the shelves, and there was a stale, half-eaten pot of cold rice sitting on the stove.

‘You know what you’ve done in this room,’ an investigator told Deakin, showing him a photo of several children – to which he shrugged. Just minutes later, police rescued two girls aged nine and 11.

David Timothy Deakin was slick with sweat during his arrest (Picture: AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

Cassie, the grown-up victim of a similar – but unrelated – child abuse case, told the AP she was the youngest daughter in an impoverished family when a man came to her village, promising her a better life if she went to the city with him.

Now 19, Cassie was then just 12 years old. Within months of leaving with the man, he had bleached her skin, straightened her hair and was waking her up at 4am to ‘work’.

‘He needed some girl to show her whole body in front of the camera,’ she said.

The abuse eventually ended when Cassie’s older sister found out and went to the police.

A photo of Deakin next to a laptop and a wireless webcam (Picture: AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

NBI officers conduct a briefing in Manila before carrying out a raid in Mabalacat (Picture: AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

Some buyers try to brush off the abuse, claiming that them not directly touching the children lessens the crime.

But human rights lawyer Sam Inocencio, who heads up International Justice Mission’s Philippines office, said: ‘It’s not just a virtual crime. It is an actual crime. Online sexual exploitation is possibly the most evil thing that I’ve seen.’

In recent years there has been a disturbing proliferation of webcam sex crimes.

Last year alone there were 8.2million reports related to online child sexual exploitation posted to the US-based National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children’s CyberTipline. Compare this with the previous 17 years, in which there were 8.3million reports in total.

Officials at both ends of the abuse have agreed to collaborate in order to tackle it, and last month the US put forward $3million (£2.3million).

Deakin being arrested by the NBI at his home in the Philippines (Picture: AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

A meth pipe found on Deakin’s floor (Picture: AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

The raid on Deakin’s house turned out to be one of the largest seizures of its kind for the NBI.

On just his Cheery Mobile Touch HD tablet they found more than 4,000 contacts. Looking into just one computer, they found it was networked into another 13, from servers all around the world. On top of this, there were 30 hard drives.

Bessie Geronimo, Deakin’s neighbour, told reporters she had seen children going in and out of the house. Now, she wondered, perhaps she could have intervened.